How many people live in Japan?

How to get close to this number

Anchor on a European comparison. This is a wealthy, heavily urbanised island nation that is comfortably larger than any single European country — roughly one and a half times the largest of them. That comparison puts it above a hundred million and well below two hundred.

The shrinkage is the defining fact rather than the total. The population has fallen every year since 2010, losing roughly half a million annually, which is the equivalent of a mid-sized city disappearing each year. Very few countries have sustained decline for that long, which makes this the reference case.

The age figure in the explanation is the one with global implications: nearly thirty percent over sixty-five, the oldest large country in the world. Much of Europe, and eventually much of East Asia, is following the same curve a couple of decades behind — which is why policy researchers everywhere study this country's experience as a preview rather than as an anomaly.